Born to Rule

2. Education

5 Born to Rule: Autobiography of a Life President 2 Education I have a very humble academic background and I am proud of it. Although I had opportunities to pursue my studies abroad, especially as the missionaries with whom I was staying were prepared to sponsor me, I decided to stay and militate for my people. My stay with the missionaries had opened my eyes wide to see many things which my fellow countrymen could not see. I witnessed, for example, the daily humiliation to which our people were subjected because they were illiterate. Let’s face it. It is not because someone cannot read and write that he or she is not intelligent just as it isn’t because one cannot spell potato that one can’t be vice-president of the most powerful country on earth. And it is not because one is black that one is automatically more prone to sinning. It was for these and other cogent reasons that I rebelled and joined the patriotic forces that were being formed to obtain our independence. So much has been read into my disagreement with my missionary guardians at the time that I believe I should shed some light on what really happened. We all know that before missionaries came to Africa, we Africans had our own forms of worship, and still do to this day. I refused to accept the fact that the few Mandzahs that were ordained at the time in the Christian ministry should be housed in different residential areas, cut off from where their foreign missionary brethren were staying. Yet another thing that really chilled me was the fact that during my entire stay on the mission, I never ate with the children of my missionary guardians. I was always served alone and I would sit in the kitchen and have no one to play with while their children sat in the parlour with their parents. I slowly came to realize that my missionary guardians hadn’t really adopted me as their own child as they made everyone who visited us believe. 6 Tah Asongwed One day I decided that enough was enough and left. My sudden departure meant that I had to disrupt my studies because the missionaries refused to continue paying my fees. I had already finished secondary school and had begun the first term in high school. Like all children at the time, I began keeping bad company. We would steal food from the market to eat, push trucks, gamble, and sleep in market stalls. It was at this time that the late Efon Akum scoured the countryside preaching trade unionism. I remember attending some of his rallies where he would call on all Mandzahs to fight for their rights. He referred, in particular, to those Mandzahs who had fought in World War I and who had been abandoned when the War ended without any benefits. Some of these people had lost their eyes, arms, feet, etc. and the colonial government had not given them the care they deserved. I remember seeing some of these people Efon Akum displayed at his rallies, and to this day, that experience has left a scar on me. ...